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Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

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Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#331

Post by Tepix »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #324

++1 Was able to build a large financial application just with the 20 USD subscription in the last 12 month - without Claude, I would have required 5 - 6 people and at least 1 year of funding. This was by far my best investment in my whole life 12x20 USD vs. 750.000 salary :-) It is especially inspiring since it brings you usually a few new ideas into your context; also just joking around with it can yield new inspira…

Are you using this large financial application just for yourself?

I think the difficult task is/will be to sell vibe coded software from the lone developer to anyone.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#332

Post by KellyCriterion »

samiv wrote: post #51

As a principal engineer I feel completely let down. I've spent decades building up and accumulating expert knowledge and now that has been massively devalued. Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software. I feel depressed and very unmotivated and expect to retire soon. Talk about a rug pull! My experience is that people who weren't very good at writing software are the ones now "most excited" to "create" w…

> Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software.

Well, this is not what the main value of software actually is? Its not about prompting a one shot app, sure there will be some millionaires making an app super successful by coincidence (flapp bird, eg.), but in most cases software & IT engineering is about the context, integration, processes, maintenance, future development etc.

So actually you are in perfect shape?

And no worries: The one who werent good at writing code, will now fail because of administration/uptime/maintenance/support. They will fail just one step later.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#333

Post by izacus »

scottLobster wrote: post #42

Maybe the internet has made me too cynical, and I'm glad people seem to be having a good time, but at time of posting I can't help but notice that almost every comment here is suspiciously vague as to what, exactly, is being coded. Still better than the breathless announcements of the death of software engineering, but quite similar in tone.

It's also usually from people who stopped coding and haven't kept their skills up.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#334

Post by siddhxrth »

as a 22 year old it's interesting to see how things are going to span out. o've 0 idea what i spend my time building my expertise on.

luckily i'm trusting my gut that staying away from cheap dompamine and following what's cool might just land somewherere

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#335

Post by jodleif »

par wrote: post #20
ynac wrote: post #6

Same here - it's like programming with a couple of buddies. Occasionally they goof off and wreck everything, but we put it back together and end up with a finished project. I'm literally going through my backlog of projects from the early 80s! There are parts of each of these projects that were black holes for me - just didn't know enough to get a toe hold. With Karl (that's my agent) he explains everything I don't u…

> it's like programming with a couple of buddies. Occasionally they goof off and wreck everything, Nailed it :)

The sad part is the “buddy hackathon” is kind of redundant now

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#336

Post by sdevonoes »

lovelearning wrote: post #171
samiv wrote: post #51

As a principal engineer I feel completely let down. I've spent decades building up and accumulating expert knowledge and now that has been massively devalued. Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software. I feel depressed and very unmotivated and expect to retire soon. Talk about a rug pull! My experience is that people who weren't very good at writing software are the ones now "most excited" to "create" w…

> Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software. I must say I find this idea, and this wording, elitist in a negative way. I don't see any fundamental problem with democratization of abilities and removal of gatekeeping. Chances are, you were able to accumulate your expert knowledge only because: - book writing and authorship was democratized away from the church and academia - web content publication and p…

The real litmus test is whether one would allow LLMs to determine a medical procedure without human check. As of 2026, I wouldn’t. In the same sense I prefer to work with engineers with tons of experience rather than fresh graduates using LLMs

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#337

Post by KellyCriterion »

lovelearning wrote: post #252
ares623 wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is 2-3 centralized providers of this new technology "democratization"?

It's _relatively_ democratic when compared to these counterfactual gatekeeping scenarios: - What if these centralized providers had restricted their LLMs to a small set of corporations / nations / qualified individuals? - What if Google that invented the core transformer architecture had kept the research paper to themselves instead of openly publishing it? - What if the universities / corporations, who had worked on…

> - What if Google that invented the core transformer architecture had kept the research paper to themselves instead of openly publishing it?

I'm pretty sure that someone else would have come around the corner with a similar idea some time later, because the fundamentals of these stuff were already discussed decases before "Attention is all you need" paper, the novel thing they did was combining existing knowhow into a new idea and making it public. A couple of ingredients of the base research for this is decades old (interestingly back then some European universities were leading the field)

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#338

Post by mikkupikku »

iExploder wrote: post #302
lovelearning wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any idiot can now prompt their way to the same software. I must say I find this idea, and this wording, elitist in a negative way. I don't see any fundamental problem with democratization of abilities and removal of gatekeeping. Chances are, you were able to accumulate your expert knowledge only because: - book writing and authorship was democratized away from the church and academia - web content publication and p…

> I don't see any fundamental problem with democratization of abilities and removal of gatekeeping. It was very democratized before, almost anyone could pick up a book or learn these skills on the internet. Opportunity was democratized for a very long time, all that was needed was the desire to put in the work. OP sounds frustrated but at the same time the societal promise that was working for longest time (spend per…

I'm mad about Ozempic. For years I toiled, eating healthy foods while other people stuffed their faces with pizza and cheese burgers. Everybody had the opportunity to be thin like me, but they didn't take that and earn it like me. So now instead of being happy about their new good fortune and salvaged health, I'm bitter and think society has somehow betrayed me and canceled promises.

/s, obviously I would hope except I've actually seen this sentiment expressed seriously.

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#339

Post by 3rodents »

KellyCriterion wrote: post #324

++1 Was able to build a large financial application just with the 20 USD subscription in the last 12 month - without Claude, I would have required 5 - 6 people and at least 1 year of funding. This was by far my best investment in my whole life 12x20 USD vs. 750.000 salary :-) It is especially inspiring since it brings you usually a few new ideas into your context; also just joking around with it can yield new inspira…

Would you have needed 6 people? I find that Claude, Codex etc. are able to output so much because they do a lot of reinventing the wheel whereas a human, given constraints, would make much more pragmatic choices around which technology to use. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, and regardless, you’ve been able to achieve something you’re happy with, which is what matters. But, I’d still like to hear more about what it has done that you think you couldn’t have done in a year yourself by choosing existing technologies. E.g: what is novel in your application? What background do you have?

Re: Tell HN: I'm 60 years old. Claude Code has re-ignited a passion

#340

Post by mikkupikku »

Tepix wrote: post #331
KellyCriterion wrote: post #324

++1 Was able to build a large financial application just with the 20 USD subscription in the last 12 month - without Claude, I would have required 5 - 6 people and at least 1 year of funding. This was by far my best investment in my whole life 12x20 USD vs. 750.000 salary :-) It is especially inspiring since it brings you usually a few new ideas into your context; also just joking around with it can yield new inspira…

Are you using this large financial application just for yourself? I think the difficult task is/will be to sell vibe coded software from the lone developer to anyone.

Hyper-individualized software is what LLMs are best for IMHO. They lower the bar so much that it's becoming perfectly feasible and reasonable to amase a large amount of software which is fit to your exact personal needs and preferences.
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